PIVOT CINEMA & INFX PRESENTS
The PowerHouse Geelong is Victoria’s latest graff and street art mecca. With massive 5-storey pieces by RONE and by MAYO on the exterior, and a plethora of works by over 50 big names inside including UNWELL BUNNY, ADNATE, OHNOES, SKUBZ, POISE, DUKE, ITCH, BLACKSKYBLUE and so many more…

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Romaji (ローマ字) is a term that defines the romanisation of Japanese script to aid translation of that language into roman characters. The term loosely describes the phonetic translation of Japanese language to English (or romanised) languages emanating from the Western world. This title was chosen for the project because the production of these video art works are born from a similar pursuit. This effort is to transcribe ideas of political theory in contemporary Asia to those people viewing the works in Kyoto, Japan.TheEconasiaseries is a project that has spanned four years and encompasses nine single and multi-channel video art works, with accompanied photographs.Econasia: Romajiincorporates 4 of these video works that investigate both the man-made and natural environments in North Korea, Japan, Indonesia and Malaysia. Local social and political accounts that relate the economic and political influences driving the so-called Asian Century are interwoven with modernist literature, sound, and contrived narratives that depict political science in the moving image.

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Thanks For Askingis a performace project by Barry Laing with artistsMartin White, Matthew Berka and the First Impressions Youth Theatre. It will be held at the Epping Memorial Hall this Friday and Saturday. The event presents a hybrid of live video and theatrical performance as part of the City of Whittlesea‘syouth theatrecompany. White remarks that“It‘s an extraordinary work that arose from us asking the group to identify things they’ve never been asked, but would like to be. The answers (sometimes true, sometimes false, sometimes both) give an amazing insight into the participant‘s lives, thoughts and experiences. The responses have also formed the basis for abstracted physical choreographies“. As these forays delve into defining the identity of self, using various physical and technical methods, the night promises to be quite an extraordinary event. Thanks For Askingwill meld content and form between pre-shot interview, stage play, dance and video mash-ups. Definitely worth the trip up to Epping.

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During 5 days of last week, I documented Tom Nicholson‘s Indefinite Substitution as part of The Cinemas Project. The project involves 5 artists that relate notions of site and cinema at 5 regional Victoria cities: Mildura, Warnambool, Bendigo, Sale and Geelong. The project was commissioned by NETS Victoria, curated by Bridget Crone and includes the artists Tom Nicholson, Mikala Dwyer, Brooke Andrew, Lily Hibberd and Bianca Hester. My footage was used by the ABC in their Arts segment below:

Indefinite Substitutionfuses the historical relevance of the Joy Arc cinema, Australia‘s first on-water cinema at Geelong‘s Eastern Beach, with the histories ofWilliam Buckley and Melbourne‘s founder John Batman. Buckleyescaped from the subsequently abandoned penal settlement at Sorrento and lived with the Wathaurong for 32 years, in and around present-day Geelong. Tom remarked that “one could almost consider Buckley Australia’s first asylum seeker,” and that while John Batman allegedly signed a treaty with the Wurundjeri people, “which recognises the sovereignty of the people who lived he before,” that treaty was more like a Medieval pact and may have been forged.

Up to 60 volunteers retraced the steps of Batman and Buckley, reforming two un-fired busts of the men into barely recognisable lumps of clay. The process of transporting the sculptures of these figures from Victoria‘s colonial past alludes to an alternate history of Batman and Buckley‘s role in history. “I guess it’s a way of thinking about how to commemorate the early foundation of Melbourne and thinking about a way of talking about those histories different to the classical language of sculptures that we might use.” says Tom.

“The work addresses the way in which Western countries perpetuate the state of lack that haunts formerly colonized territories and problematizes the ‘prosperity’ of economic neoliberalism.”-Diego Ramirez (fromMoney Map: Thoughts on M.T. Walker‘s Explicate)